


Burnt Edges

by watermelonsuit



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: (the end of the) Occupation, Bajor, Bajoran Religion, Established Relationship, F/F, Old rituals and some new ones, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-21 19:38:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7401145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watermelonsuit/pseuds/watermelonsuit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The end of the Bajoran Occupation is the end of the Bajoran Resistance, and the beginning of something else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burnt Edges

They descended from the Dahkur Hills cautiously in the first weeks, finding no one in the first days, and then a few wounded resistance fighters hiding in the rocky foothills. The wounded became civilians as they approached the central city, mainly farmers, farmers' children, anyone the Cardassians could say posed a threat. What was left of the Shaakar resistance cell stopped each time, bandaged the wounds, set broken bones, left whatever supplies they could. Lupaza had hoped that the injured on the road would decrease as they approached the center of the province. Aid should have come and spread out from the capital and met them on the road by now, but they only found Bajorans who suffered in the Occupation until the very last.

Between the one or two wounded Bajorans they would meet as they walked, there was always the dry, barren land and a few hardy trees left standing, though not as many as there had been in the mountains. Nerys stopped to look into the green-gray branches of a tall one, still alive though the trunk was burned, as if by weapons discharge, so Lupaza stopped too, waved the others onward.

"Nerys?"

"Look." They both knelt and Nerys and took one, holding it in her hands. "Peldor joi," she said, smiling.

"Peldor joi is right," Lupaza stood up. "Don't kill it," she said as Nerys plucked more leaves from the scraggly plant. 

"I won't."

She picked up the last leaves from the ground, brown and curling.

/You're so pretty when you smile,/ the men in the resistance used to say to Nerys, before they saw the deadly flash in her eyes when she heard it. She'd rarely had the occasion to smile anyway. There were quick, bitter grins in resistance victories, which were always death, which was in fact almost the only thing Nerys had to smile about for a long time.

Now, walking the poisoned ground with Lupaza and a handful of bateret leaves, she smiled. Lupaza had never seen anyone smile like that, like Nerys beaming at her. 

"We're almost home," Lupaza said, squeezing Nerys' free hand.

"We've always been home. The Cardassians didn't want us to know that."

Lupaza nodded, watching Nerys' smile fade, then kissed her ear. "I know you'll be great up there on the station."

"Let's not talk about it."

"Okay. I just wanted to tell you I'll look up at the sky every day and every night and—"

”It won't be in orbit over Bajor, Lupaza. Not anymore. They're moving it to the Denorios Belt by the new wormhole." Nerys closed her eyes, as though to fathom the distance.

"That far." 

Nerys shook her head.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. And you know what?" She looked up at Lupaza and pulled her phaser rifle from her belt. "We could light the bateret leaves with these. An early Peldor Festival." She raised the leaves in her hand to a skeptical Lupaza, but didn't look altogether convinced herself.

"You really think—" Lupaza gestured at the rifle.

"I'm the best shot in the cell, I'll be careful." A sliver of that impossible smile again.

"Second best shot," Lupaza kidded, but stood back.

Nerys laid the leaves in a straight line at their feet, and took a few steps backward as her rifle powered up. Each shot singed the far edge of a bateret leaf and hit the dirt, which began to cloud the air with smoke and a foul chemical smell.

"What did they do?" Nerys asked, choking.

"Whatever it was, we can't just burn it and raise a new crop." Lupaza pulled Nerys close, shielding her from the smoke, bowing her head over dusty hair to keep from coughing. She ran her hands through it, smelling the mountain dirt and the lilac oil Nerys sometimes wore, and kissed her forehead, nose, and mouth. Nerys returned the kisses and traced her earring, the dolamide one she'd made Lupaza last year and said it was in return for her own, though they both knew it was more traditional than that. 

Tradition found them on dark nights when the stars and moons were visible and their histories meant too much not to honor them. Nerys would slip from Lupaza’s thigh to whisper fragments of the ritual marriage chant, and Lupaza would supply the responses; she remembered more of it, when she could focus, but didn't have the kind of faith that felt comfortable near one as strong as Nerys'. It was enough for Lupaza to lie next to her then, and to walk beside her in days like these.

"Look." Lupaza did. The bateret leaves were still burning on the ground, visible through the rising dust. She bent to pick one up by its burnt stem. 

"Peldor joi, Kira Nerys."

Nerys smiled again—somehow less impossible in this new world, and Lupaza was glad of it. "Peldor joi."


End file.
